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October 11, 2002
Front-Page
News
You Say You Want
a Resolution Speaking to the Atlanta Constitution for
an October 2 story titled "Senate Set to Debate President's
War Request," Five College Assistant Professor of International
Relations Jon Western weighed in on the progress of a congressional
resolution authorizing war with Iraq. Western noted how the Johnson
and Nixon administrations used the congressional Gulf of Tonkin
Resolution to prosecute a much wider war in Southeast Asia than
members of either the House or the Senate had expected. In fact,
that resolution, which set the stage for ten years of war in Vietnam,
Cambodia, and other parts of Southeast Asia, was debated for fewer
than eleven hours in Congress. Now, Western, who is writing a
book on the history of U.S. decisions regarding war, worries that
members of Congress lack the political will to question possible
war in Iraq. "The conditions under which quagmires occur
are when there is this ambiguous threat and not a clear road map
of where the United States should go," Western said.
Coffee Buzz
A Boston Sunday Globe article examining the progress of
the Fair Trade coffee movement on college campuses noted that
Mount Holyoke serves the politically potent brew in every dining
area. The idea behind Fair Trade–certified coffee, Noah Isackson's
September 29 article explains, is "to bypass a global market
that, activists say, oppresses millions of coffee farmers. The
idea is simple, too: a fair price for the often underpaid smaller
growers." Last year at MHC, Isackson says, "that South
Hadley activism amounted to about 16,320 pots, or 163,200 cups,
of politically active brew." Oxfam America, which is backing
the movement, reports that Fair Trade campaigns are perking on
at least one hundred college campuses.
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